starfishmanifestofandomcom-20200214-history
When the Stones cry out
This section originally appeared within the "Spiritual Intelligence" section of Part II of the Manifesto, entitled The Prophetic Dimension. This section, and where it appears within Spiritual Intelligence, is indicated below, followed by the text of the section * Normal Intelligence * Paranormal Intelligence * Biblical Examples of Spiritual Intelligence * Prophetic History in CAWKI * God's GPS * Amos 3:7 Principle * Ways not Works * Disciples that God seeks "Preach to the tree!" * Industrial Revolutions compared * The Inspiration Age (the 4th Industrial Revolution) * Prophetic Pictures * Benjamins * Prophetic Warnings * When the Stones cry out ---- There is a dimension of prophecy that is hardly ever recognized by Christians. It is when God, in absence of a suitable vessel among his own people, chooses to make his voice known by using other means and people. We all have read of the famous donkey of Balaam, which was able to speak the truth and see spiritual reality before the rider, who was supposed to prophesy (Num 22). And Jesus once said: “If these become silent, the stones will cry out.” (Luke 19:40). And so, in times of prophetic silence, rather than the church prophesying to the world, the world prophesied to itself – as well as to the church. In the absence of the church being a prophetic voice to the world, it was often secular people, officially disconnected to God, but sometimes more in tune with what God thinking than the church itself, who became prophetic voices. They picked up something out of the air, an issue that the church should have picked up long before, and tried to voice and live it as well as they could. Many of them were scientists, artists, politicians, and inventors, people who saw something of God without necessarily knowing who dropped it into their mind. Did Einstein really know who put E=mc2 in his mind while he was asleep? And yet it revolutionized technology until today. Remember Da Vinci, that brilliant artist and scientist who rebelled against the naive and stubborn science monopoly of the Roman Catholic Church of his day in ways that made American novelist Dan Brown a millionaire just by writing about it? Remember Mahatma Gandhi, this brilliant near-apostolic leader involved in issues of justice, nation building, non-violence and embracing the poor? Remember Marx? Although I don’t at all believe that Marxism is the answer, here was someone who spoke out early and cohesively against the blatant capitalism exploiting the poor. Remember the flower-power people, the Hippies who sang “make love not war,” rejecting the blatant materialism and boring, square, workaholic lifestyle of their own pseudo-Christian parents? Remember, literally, when the (Rolling) Stones, that rock band, cried out: “Sex, drugs, and rock and roll!” as an angry, loud protest against the pathetic, consumerist, streamlined, bigoted, and monotonous 7-5 society around them and tried to provoke everybody? They were simply looking for means to move the unmovable, a self-absorbed, materialistic, cold and plastic capitalism that trapped people in “the system.” Like “The Stones”, many age groups have used music like Jazz, originally the music of black slaves preaching liberty with the trinity of piano, bass, and drum. This was followed by Bebop, Beat, Pop, and an endless succession of musical styles like groove, rave, Hip Hop, etc., that, in many ways, were nothing else than loud cries for meaning, love, sense, in a spirit of agony, protest, and the defiance of youth dying in a sea of predictable, materialistic boredom. The same is true for the creation of “coolness,” that show of unperturbed hip and emotional distance in the face of “a life full of shit” as any street kid in Harlem would say. When no one spoke out for the liberation of slaves, they would sing gospels, songs of freedom and liberation, about prophetic subjects that concerned not only them, but also their white oppressors who needed liberation and deliverance probably even more than them. All of them knew something was wrong, terribly wrong, with life, and they were desperately looking for the enemy. This search was prophetic! They knew they needed help, and they looked for a Messiah, looked for love, yes, in all the wrong places, but at least they were looking, mainly because the church was not providing. Should this not have been subjects that followers of Jesus voiced? Is this not what Christians should do, to help people get out of a world that is basically a trap? Say what you want about Socialism and Communism, but they put more thought and effort into defining communal living, the sharing of material goods in order to alleviate suffering and the creation of a just society than the churches in the capitalistic West - and were ready to die for that by the millions. What did the church say and do about this? Read Ron Siders Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger? I remember translating Ron in a larger conference in Germany in 1993 where he spoke on the terrible injustice in the world to a mostly charismatic audience. It made me sad to see folks leaving the conference while he spoke, because they had come for some charismatic kick, not to be reminded of injustice. Remember the New Age movement in the 80’s, Fritjof Capra, Merilyn Ferguson and all? The movement was crying out: Where is spiritual reality, spiritual power? And the powerless church of the West that has created this very vacuum of the spirit did not know better than to point their fingers, attend some New-Age-Oh-My-goodness seminars to prevent any infection, warned everyone to get involved, and trotted on, basically unperturbed. Today God is using films with prophetic subjects like The Matrix, Braveheart, The Lord of The Rings and others to communicate prophetic messages around the globe. Or books by novelists, known and unknown. And again and again, God speaks through music and arts, most of it - in the absence of more guys like U2 singer and Christian prophet Bono - done by people not yet connected to God. Yes, it’s not the full gospel; yes it’s not enough for salvation. But it makes folks hungry for more. And hundreds of millions are listening, most of them people who would never darken the door of a traditional church building. And it puts people into a search mode. Remember: first search, then find. Imagine a church out there, out where the questions are, the teens, the people in the clubs, concert halls, galleries, in the media, in politics, among the 300 million Dalits of India looking for identity, among the 27 million slaves we have today on the globe, in education, arts, sports, interpreting the prophetic dreams and healthy questions that today’s society discusses. And when we finish imagining, let’s do it. Millions of people have Jesus-shaped questions - and Church-as-God-wants-it (hereinafter CAGWI), the church that he invented, is the vessel to harvest those people. However, most folks only know Church-As-We-Know-It (hereinafter CAWKI) and are perplexed, because they see the difference between Jesus and the classical church system very well, and wonder where to go. So they go back to more concerts, music, arts, and media. So why don’t you also, like a growing number of Christians who begin to see the connection, open your house, open your kitchen, open your fridge, invite folks with questions, forget all churchyness, and let the answers begin to sink in.